As a regular reader and someone who occasionally writes short fiction, I had no idea Apex was interested in plausible near future stories! This is great to hear, especially since Redstone SF just went on extended hiatus.

Now, it seems to me, the technology is there for a truly interactive novel. It’s been attempted;

There has been a huge revival in interactive fiction in the past few years, but it hasn’t reached the more conventional and commercial genre venues yet, though some people are trying. The IFDB has everything for the discerning reader, with great recommendations lists.

Visual novels are also increasingly available over commercial channels in the West too, and more and more Western developers try to make their own. I wish Steam had a way of listing VNs separately (my most recent purchase was Analogue: A Hate Story, but I haven’t tried it yet).

These trends have also affected mainstream gaming, more and more genre hybrids appear that use visual novel formats for storytelling and other genres for game mechanics (the Mass Effect series is a good example IMO – it moved away from a more traditional action-RPG playstyle to a shooter + VN hybrid, but there are many others).

I had an article about this trend in English two years ago, and it’s only become more pronounced since then. (I have more recent articles, but they are in Hungarian…)

By the way, while we’re at Mass Effect, I thought it’d start a new trend of space marines + psychic powers (I suppose this would be a further subgenre of cybermagic?) but it hasn’t happened to my knowledge… neither in games writing or in spec fic. *sigh*

“I’m rather shocked we haven’t seen much in the way of fantasy/western crossovers.” — Felix Gilman’s The Half-Made World, Territory by Emma Bull, Gemma Files’ The Book of Tongues, Mike Resnick’s weird westerns, and Natania Barron’s Aldersgate Cycle are a good start. Stephen King’s Dark Tower?

“cybermagic” — I’m not completely sure what this means, but G. Willow Wilson’s Alif the Unseen would fit my first guess as to what this word means. Djinn magic and computer hacking.

“Average People Tales” — some of the literary writers “encroachment” (for lack of a better word) into sf does this — Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” is just a regular dad and his son; “The Age of Miracles” is an average 11 year old girl reacting to the slowing of the earth’s spin; the protagonist of “Shine Shine Shine” is married to an astronaut (but this isn’t extraordinary). In the sf world, Octavia Butler’s wonderful “Parable of the Sower” takes place largely among average people; but of course the protagonist has ideas and a will which make her an extraordinary character. (No super-weapons or wealth or being the center of major events.)